Celebrity Chronicler Gives Rome Another Taste of La Dolce Vita

ROME -- It was just like old times. Rino Barillari, self-styled king of
Italy's street photographers, swooped down on his prey, a famous model
at an outdoor cafe. As his camera clicked, a hunky bodyguard heaved a
bucket of ice at him. Barillari kept snapping and caught on film the
stream of water heading his way.

The dousing made news, not because the model was the target of
photography but because the target of the bucket was Barillari. He has
achieved a high status seemingly impossible among the paparazzi, the
intrusive practitioners of a widely despised profession. After 35 years
of sticking a camera in the face of celebrities -- to immortalize them
slurping spaghetti, wandering around drunk or, better yet, doing both in
the company of someone else's spouse -- Barillari himself has become a
star.

Or, more precisely, part of a myth, a living link to a coveted
past. His antics remind everyone that not so long ago this city was an
international gathering place of the glamorous. The years were the 1950s
and '60s, forever memorialized by Federico Fellini in his famous movie,
"La Dolce Vita." It means "the sweet life," and a nosy photographer in
the film was named Signor Paparazzo, a word for a pesky insect. The
title has been applied to his ilk ever since.

Italy, emerging from war and poverty, was infatuated with
celebrity. Now, in this crowded, traffic-clogged and noisy city, Romans
speak longingly of those days as an age of innocence. A golden era has
grown up in the mind, perhaps as an antidote to the less glorious years
since: the corruption scandals and political drift of the 1990s, the
money grubbing and over-building of the '80s, the terror of the '70s.
When Barillari gets splashed with ice water, smeared with ice cream,
pelted with a wine glass, slammed with a chair, pummeled with fists or
just plain insulted by an irritated celebrity, it makes everyone feel
good -- even him, to some extent. Rome can believe it is young again.

"Who would care about this city if not for us paparazzi?" Barillari
asks with a stereotypical paparazzi swagger. "People hate us, you say?
You can only truly hate someone you love."

Defending the myth is hard to do. Great herds of movie stars no
longer roam the Via Veneto, nor pad through winding alleys to Alfredo's
restaurant to feed on its famous fettucine. Here and there, you can spot
a scrawny model, one of the divas who seem to be standing in for
actresses in the Roman heart. Maybe a loose Sylvester Stallone. But not
very often an Anita Ekberg, after all these years still regarded as the
Great White Blonde of Italian cinematic dreams. No Gregory Peck and
Audrey Hepburn on a Vespa (a pair soon to appear on a tourist ad for the
Rome area). No Liz, Rita, Ava. The kind of stars whose pictures could be
sold to a dozen news wires and to a hundred magazines.

The movies and the stars, particularly the Americans, left Italy as
it became an expensive place to do business. The 1970s "decade of lead,"
when kidnappers held the rich for ransom and terrorists shot up central
Rome, further suffocated the city.

By the time peace returned, Italy was a different place: urban,
educated, entranced by television, harder to impress. Divorce, once
forbidden in this Catholic country, was legalized. "Temptation was what
la Dolce Vita was about. Italy is beyond temptation now," said
Barillari.

Still, Rome demands to see approximations of la Dolce Vita, and
Barillari walks the streets looking for big game. He packs a little bag
with an arsenal of cameras, as he has most evenings since snapping a
picture of an American at Trevi Fountain in 1960. He earned $20 for the
shot, an unheard-of amount for a migrant from impoverished Calabria. He
was only 14 and had acquired a taste for glamour operating a projector
in a movie house in his home town. "Once you see the movies, Calabria
seems a very small place," he said.

The projectionist job gave him an invaluable edge: familiarity with
movie star faces. He always knew where to point his camera. He also came
to know every doorman, every restaurant owner, every waiter, every
street vendor, cops, all the advance scouts for the paparazzi.

He is 49, a father of two grown children and walks with a limp. The
piratical gait results from a stabbing at a soccer riot of skinheads he
covered not long ago. He greets almost everyone with a kiss and a
compliment. For added charm's sake, he spices his Italian with a few
English expressions. No problem! You make me cry! I'm sorry!
Catastrophic! You are my destiny!

Barillari defends his trade with a blend of a gotcha journalistic
code and medieval morality. The trend toward recording frontal nudity,
particularly of politicians, is no particular bother to Barillari. "We
supply reality. A picture of someone in a pose, all perfect and nice,
says nothing. When I shoot someone, they react, people see how they are.
What are these politicians doing taking off their clothes on the prows
of yachts and on the beach? They know they are in the public eye. They
pay a price," Barillari said.

One sultry night recently, Barillari made the rounds, mostly on
foot. He was remarkably bouncy after a full day's work at Il Messagero,
the Rome newspaper, where he does a lot of spot-news photography. He
comes alive at night.

He carefully scanned the street-side restaurants and cafes with big
bulging eyes, eyes that scream Good Peripheral Vision. At Dal Bolognese,
a restaurant in Piazza di Popolo, he spied a slender actress over the
ornamental bushes. No difficulty there. She was clearly itching to be
photographed.

Off to Due Ladroni, a trendy eatery near the Tiber River. A TV
announcer mugged for the camera. Over to Campo di Fiori, a big piazza.
Not much.

His cellular phone rang -- cellular phones are a great advance for
paparazzi because tipsters can reach them anytime, anywhere.

"I'm nearby. I'll come up from Chiesa Nuova," Barillari said to the
scout. "Is he with a woman?"

Someone had spotted Vincent Lindon, an actor and apparent fiance of
Princess Caroline of Monaco. Barillari had photographed him a few days
earlier, seemingly in the company of two women.

Barillari limped along rapidly for a repeat. His phone rang again.
Disappointment. "Without a woman. All right . . ."

Lindon was at Pizzeria Montecarlo, a nice touch for someone with a
love interest in Monaco. Barillari moved in, close. The flashes lit up
everyone's pizza. It was over in a moment, except that Barillari decided
to have a beer and toast Lindon. The actor exploded with a variety of
multilingual epithets. "No problem," said Barillari in false English. "I
only speak Italian."

Tourists at adjoining tables looked horrified. Italians looked
amused. Barillari seemed satisfied. It was not like when Frank Sinatra
or John Wayne punched him, or Ava Gardner kicked him, but it would have
to do.

At Bar della Pace, Rome's current Spot To See and Be Seen, he held
court. A bearded prince -- a real one, Barillari said -- pulled up a
chair. An actor arrived fresh from playing "The Cherry Orchard." A
blonde in a plastic miniskirt whispered in Barillari's ear. He gave her
his card, emblazoned with his picture. Posed. Smiling in a tie. No
paparazzi stuff for him.

An aspiring actress, escaping from an aspiring boyfriend, landed on
his lap. She said Barillari is not like all the other paparazzi. He
knows more about Rome than anyone. He knows everyone. He is simpatico,
to boot.

"You are my destiny," he responded, all the while scanning the
crowd with those incredible 3-D eyes.

It was 2:30 a.m. and Barillari is supposed to get to Il Messagero
by 8. They want shots illustrating how the Romans deal with the latest
heat wave. The return to mundanity shook him. "What the . . . It's hot
every year. Why do we do this story?" he asked to no one. No matter. He
roamed the streets until 5:30 and made it to work on time.